Personal Jesus
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: GORY. A series of oneshots, where Anderson finds himself praying at the altar of his darkest, guilty desire. AxAA yaoi, manxman, violent content
1. Chapter 1

**Personal Jesus**

_"Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters."- John Ford_

* * *

"Father," I purred softly, to his dark ear, "I have sinned."

The curtly teasing declaration barely shook the roots of his mountain. He was a stalwart, impressive adversary, worthy of nothing but the utmost respect from monster to mortal. I had no idea how well today's exchange would go, but it would be a refreshing exercise indeed. The last time we had met, he had cut off my right arm and my left leg and it was a glorious day indeed, fillling him likewise full of holes and laughing like a goddamn lunatic with only two of four of my limbs remaining.

Ah. I do miss the old days.

The man in question, poised at the altar with his head bowed, looked behind him slowly. Long reaching fingers of the moon reached in through the stained glass windows; they filled the round gleam of his glasses like cups, full of silver, and made his mouth a mockery of civility. "Aye? And how many sins have ye accumulated this time, ye daft monster?"

"Let me count them." The Casull felt like a wonderful weight, alive with possibility, filling me with a pulsing need to feel blood spatter against my frozen skin, setting fire to my blood, bringing me to the absolute climax. Each bullet was the quintessential proof of existence. It was my mark on this dark, filthy world... marks made for no one but my Master. Little did she understand that everything I did was, in fact, for my own pure malicious joy. "With each one of these."

Good Father Anderson made a noise like a growl and a groan, as if he's been content with fighting me already. But his broad shoulders tightened under the holy garb he wore, and there again - that smile, that beautiful smile, revealing the beast that otherwise looked so tame, with perfectly straight teeth. The pools of his glasses gleamed at me in furtive interest. "I dinnae think you 'ave come to commune with my Lord."

"Of course not," I answered none too kindly, tipping my hat over my eyes with a crooked smile. "Though this house of God is tainted. My Master has sent me here, under orders that I must silence the freaks residing in the floor boards."

There, his brow wrinkled. He turned around gradually, a frown on his lips. "We must stop runnin' into each other like this. I swear that I was sent for th'same."

Integra, I started thinking, what did you really send me here for? But the opportunity was too sweet to pass up, to dance with a well-loved partner to our familiar deathsong. "I don't even sense a hint of the supernatural here... Priest, I think we've been played. You're too much of a golden boy to lie."

"I take that as a compliment," Anderson replied with a surprisingly generous beaming smile. The ring of blessed bayonets grated on my ears, gleaming from his hands. "Ya sin-drenched filth!"

The space between us considerably disintegrated in an explosion of urgency. A single bayonet pierced my breast and filled my nose with the scent of seared copper; the rest of my senses reeled with the taste of something different. Those tense shoulders hardened like stone, expending every energy possible to push me back. The altar behind him creaked and groaned with our combined weight. His skin tasted like sweat and bitter soap; he smelled like something clean and pressed, a savory smoky hint of new sins yet unnumbered. He pushed harder. The hard slab of his thigh nudged between my legs; he groaned again, his teeth flashing white in a grimace of amusement.

"Ye can't wait, can ye..." He slid his palm from the handle of the bayonet to the other side, where the blade was still sticking out from between my ribs, flicking his knuckle against the substance so it resonated from inside my very flesh.

I pushed my tongue against his throat and moaned around pain, "O Judas Priest... You cannot comprehend."

In the darkness, my master would beat me - as many masters did at least once in their lives. But oh, my Integra, would whip me... and I would wait for it, her silhouette, the hard instrument of punishment hot in her white-knuckled grasp. The pain would blossom behind my closed eyes, my breath panting, begging for more, as her anger spilled out in a flood of savagery. I never knew it could feel so good to serve such a minimal purpose.

But it never felt like this, like rough hands pushing between lapels, raking blunt human teeth against my jaw, hard metal thrumming against my skin. I shot him in the shoulder and tore my fingertips into the seeping hole, grinning around his lips, his adam's apple dipping dangerously low with his groan of carnal pleasure. His virgin eagerness gave me no end of amusement. His first pleasure had been pain - I saw the memories bright and clear in his mind, the guilty evidence of his own sin staining his gloves, his pants, blood on his sheets as he explored the limits of his regeneration in his dark little room, guiltily reaping the enjoyment.

Now it was in my best interest to oblige his indulgences, under the gaze of Our Lord and Savior.

"More," he started to say, choked with blood, almost apologetically.

He pulled the bayonet out of my chest with a sick, muddy squelch. His hard legs pulled me down, refused to let go. I sucked at his tongue and let one single hand move downward. His robe had been since torn open. His body was scarred and yet soft, like new silk, and the clean smell was submitting to the stench of blood. I painted a heart on his rapidly rising and falling chest.

"Soon."

His legs quivered, and he knew he was willingly corrupting his soul in front of me. His unshakable faith locked away, guarded, but his faith in his God's forgiveness made me laugh. He scowled at me, patience draining away from his eyes. Then his expression was screwed up into one of hatred and alarm, writhing to escape my explorative touch that had begun a southward route.

"NO! Stop!! Ngh...!"

"You're not a priest if you're not chaste," I observed calmly, cupping the stunningly hard bulge of flesh between his legs with my palm, prominently glaring with heat despite his bloodstained trousers.

The priest howled with desperate outrage, kicking his leg out at my knee and snapping it with a crunch. I staggered away, took up the forgotten bayonet, and effortlessly pinned the offensive leg to the altar with it.

Anderson's scream was pleasing. I covered him quickly, seizing his arms and nailing them respectively to the altar as well, knocking unlit candles and the empty coffer to the floor with a rattling clang.

"You asked for more," I reminded, watching him writhe, my handiwork sending thrills of desire through my center. I enjoyed the savage hatred he bore for me in his unrepenting gaze. I felt no remorse. He was mine here, in this filthy little church, no eyes but God's to bear witness to this shame.

I smiled at his discomfort. He looked a horrid mess, his clothes torn open, his blood seeping into every available edifice, sacrificial offering to his pathetic God. I stroked his feverish skin, lapping blood from the corner of my mouth. "Don't you think for a moment that God understands?"

"You BASTARD," he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. "God... O Jesus, my Lord, forgive me--"

He bucked on the altar, while I took what I wanted, his meaningless prayers dissolving into senseless whines and growls of hate, lust, mindless, all wrapped into one. He bit his lip hard to silence himself, but that only served to please him more than it did me. He begged for God's mercy, he begged for mine. He wept like a boy.

The only witness now was shadows. The riotous minions of my past hovered near, breathing the odor of corruption, whipped into frenzied gleeful dancing as he began to rise and fall with my acutely deft ministrations. I peeled his flesh away in layers, dug my fingers deep until my fingertips scraped his bones, digging deep as if I was searching for his stubborn faith so I could effectively cut it out of him and render him a godless eunuch. His panting becoming darting moans, prayers gone now. I sucked at his fingertips, while they yet quivered with shock-induced tremors. I sipped the sweat from his palms. I wanted him to remember this. I wanted him to remember who took him first.

At the end, his breathing roughened, and every iota of his body was coiling inward, his tongue leaden and his eyes blindly seeking redemption in the boiling depths of my gaze. He found none there. His spent passion spilled glitteringly over his ruined body, pearls before swine. He breathed against my smiling lips, the victorious devil I was, a name that was not for God or the Devil - it was for me.

He wept no more, but his shuddering breaths emptied onto thin air. I watched him pull himself free of the bayonets, his body broken (no more than his soul). His hands trembled as he pushed his glasses up his nose as if nothing, nothing in the world had transpired. If not for his nakedness, one would think he had just suffered a small nightmare.

I lifted the Casull before him. "There is no more fight in you for now, is there." Exhiliration gave way to a dull, mind-pummeled apathy for what I had done to Anderson. In the wreckage of his faith, I pieced together only a stolid resentment for me and also a guiltless need to see me again. Sad that I alone made his faith real... the only real monster in a world of slavering fools.

"Get out," he said. "Get out, you--" His voice died, and replaced his curses with a breathless sigh.

I turned away and left him to his misery, a permenant smile pasted on my lips, which still tasted of soap.

* * *

Author's Notes: I wonder what was going through my mind when I wrote this. It's... not a happy fic... just wanted to show how much of an insufferable beast Alucard can be... 


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** I feel cruel again.

* * *

"I've sinned," Anderson croaked silently, trembling in the dark. "O Father, Holy Father in Heaven, forgive me. My blood for the sacrifice, to cleanse my sins. O Lord--" He cut deep into his arm near the joint of his elbow. Blood gushed forth. The little stone pot caught the blood but not all of it. He was shirtless and alone in the dark, making penances to things that still haunted him in the night. It felt like darkness had finally caught up with him, and the mark left on his skin would not be cut or washed nor even burned away. His body ached from the torture he underwent daily; by the hour, he cut himself, slashed, gouged, the pain bringing back painful, embarassing memories.

"Forgive me. Forgive me."

But he did not know what else to do. He was tired. He was so very tired, his head filled with nightmares. He was tired of cold sweats, aroused at the very sight of his blood, at the simple pleasure he gained from damaging his body that never failed to heal, again and again.

"Forgive me."

He was exhausted from waking in the night, panting at the memory of cold hands groping his flesh, of hard teeth against his lips, whisperings, sin, sin. His sheets were stained with more than just blood. He wanted it to END, and now, before he was no longer a truly devoted servant of God.

He couldn't even think of that monster's name without closing his eyes and swallowing the guilt that came with how much he wanted to say it to him, for his ears alone. No. It was all for him, all this penance and blood and blades and absolute dogmatic bullshit. The vampire would complain of the wasted blood, of the wasted prayers. Nothing helped.

He shivered, watching as his flesh, carved open seconds ago, closed again in less than two seconds. He hissed, pouring alcohol on his skin, then slowly turning the blood over into the sink in his small room at the orphanage.

He stared as the thick substance slowly drained in a mind-numbing swirl into a black abyss. He was tired of feeling empty.

He pulled the sheet up over him, stripping naked. The nights were insufferably hot in this part of the building. It made it challenging to get up in time for breakfast and make sure all the children had enough to eat, were good to play outside. All that with his gracious God-loving smile, while inside he felt like a pedophile by just looking at their innocent small faces.

"He's poisoned me," Anderson thought desperately, clawing for his pillow and shoving his face in it. He moaned. I won't sleep tonight either.

But tonight would be different. In a spare moment that would not be wasted, Alucard was free to roam. The night was his to do with as he pleased, with some restrictions; his eyes focused on the form asleep there, on the bed.

As soon as the orphanage was bathed in dark, Anderson closed his eyes and feigned sleep. As the temperature dropped five degrees, his eyes opened only enough to percieve the window directly in front of him. It was dark out now. Too dark. When had he closed his eyes? 8 o'-clock? He trembled as he listened more closely to the ticking of the clock downstairs. Sounded like ten or eleven. Vampire happy hour. God help me.

Then he focused on the window again. The latches, normally closed, were open. He frowned, remembering specifically that he had shut them. He scowled as he threw back the sheet and walked to the window across the suddenly frigid cold floor, his pale nude silhouette in the window disappearing as he latched the windows again and pulled the curtains.

His fingers slipped away from the fabric when he felt the first cold brush of fingertips against the bare back of his neck. Electrified, he froze. Down his spine, slowly, meandering like a rivulet. "You should dress warm at night. Keep out the draft, Judas Priest."

"BLOODY--" he managed to cry before a second hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his words. Cool tendrils of hair tickled his shoulders as he fought the grasp. But he had done his penance and it would take another half a day to build up his blood supply again. He had costed himself his healing speed by abusing his body so much, in so little time.

And now he was reliving his nightmare. His eyes began to burn and things blurred at the edges. He wanted to scream but couldn't.

The only question was, what was the vampire going to do to him?

Against the window pane, Alucard was not reflected. He was nosferatu, of course. He felt his finger against his lips and opened them, determined to bite down as hard as he could. But the taste was like something sweet, like sugar, or honey. His mouth watered. He had been starving himself as part of his punishment, and the temptation of something sweet was ridiculously powerful.

He sucked hungrily, and felt his enemy smile.

"Sweets for the sweet," he heard him say with a chuckle, pulling him against the monste'rs hard body. "More?"

Wordlessly, Anderson nodded, stupid as a cow. Alucard reached into his pocket and produced a small candy, unwrapped it with his teeth, and forced the chewy caramel into Anderson's mouth. The man hated caramel, but it was sweet and silky and molded to whatever shape he wanted in his mouth. His arms were both trapped at this point. He didn't care. His saliva was thick and tasteless, but as it worked its magic on the candy he let it build up and take on the sweetness, before he swallowed. Alucard seemed content to watch him as he held him captive, his cherry red eyes glazed with a sort of satisfaction. He was breaking his fast and didn't seem to even care.

The caramel melted to almost-nothing; the last bit stuck to the back of his front upper teeth. His tongue worked to get it off. Then Alucard suddenly pulled by his hair, craning his head back at a painful angle. The vampire's mouth clamped over his and forced his mouth open, squeezing his jaw until it couldn't stand the horrible ache. His slick, cold tongue, somehow wet, worked over his teeth and then found the stubborn caramel and gently took it away. He lapped at his lips; the priest trembled, desire aching and burning in his loins.

"More?" the monster heedlessly droned. "I want my enemy to be strong, understand. You are worthless to me if you do this to yourself. God doesn't care what you do to yourself. You don't belong to anyone but me, right now..." His words were poison pouring right into his left ear and seeping into his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.

"You bastard," he recited, the only familiar words he could come up with. "Damn you straight to Hell."

"Spare me." The bed came up toward him suddenly. He lay flat, face-down, and twisted his head around to find the vampire in his sights while his fingertips pulled away the plank of wood behind his bed to free a blessed bayonet from hiding. But as he plunged his hand into the darkness, he groped at nothing. His heart fell.

Where was it?! Alucard couldn't have moved it far without him noticing it, right? Damn it!

And there, a glisten of metal. It was just out of reach. It just got bumped back a bit farther. So careless...!

Alucard pulled him back from the wall, sliding his palm over his shoulder. Squeezing. His eyes burned again with tears of frustration which soon dwindled down to shame. His sanity, slowly whittled away by Alucard's touch as he pressed his palms against his lower back, forcing him to arch and pant slightly.

A wandering, moist tongue explored his spine, moving lower... slowly tantalizing every inch of him that had been burning, scalded by memories. "Priest," Alucard purred, trailing fingertips along his twitching calves.

"S...St..." Anderson stammered, clenching his hands in the sheets, eyes shut tightly, arching with betraying eagerness. "Ah...Aluc..ard...!"

White cold raced up his back. So good... his powerful legs flexed as he tried to find leverage. He hated how this .. this nosferatu seemed to find every place he didn't want him to touch, and invade it with impunity. He gasped as he felt his tongue found sensitive crevices behind his knees, kissing the backs of his thighs, white gloved fingers teasing him open, unfolding like an armadillo. Without touching his genitalia at all, he was harder than stone, aching and writhing.

How could anything feel this good, he thought hazily, and be a sin? He tried to remember why he hated Alucard, why... why he wanted penance. He felt lips at his ear, whispering, whispering.

"Come out now, priest. Stop hiding. Let me see your ridiculous face."

One instant later, and he was flipped over, and the nosferatu was leering over him with that infuriating smile. He wanted to spit in his face. "Why?" he wheezed, struggling. "Get off me... I swear, I'll... just..." He bit off his words; Alucard tilted his head to the side, touched a finger to his lips and smiled.

"Priest," Alucard mocked, flicking just the tip of his erection, causing the regenerator to jump.

"Say my name," Anderson challenged. "You won't dare... say it...! Alucard!" He writhed when his voice was a bit too loud for Alucard's liking. His punishment was a sharp, unsatisfying pinch to the inside of his thigh. The pain trickled down nerve-endings and pleasantly buzzed in his ears. He gave a low growl, and held that gaze. "Say it... Say it, monster."

"What do I get in return?"

Anderson quivered, feeling every inch of promise in the voice that spoke to him. Deep...velvet... what it would sound like if he returned the carnal pleasure he so often gave. "To keep me," he replied. "Tonight."

"Now?"

"Forever." His limbs felt heavy as he lifted his arms, pulling the vampire close and raking his cheek with his tongue. In his arms, the vampire trembled, and must have felt something equal to shock. "Say it."

"Anderson. Alexander. Anderson. Alex." Anderson felt him relax, moving against him, pieces of clothing peeling away. "Anderson, Anderson." So cold... the heat was gone. It was gone forever, between one gasp and the next moan. He felt sinless, unstained. Desire burned as a constant fuel for his every breath and word. He never wanted anything to last forever, so much, in his life. Not even his faith seemed to measure to this ecstacy. He hated the vampire. He wanted him to stay. Because he took something away when he left him barren and exhausted.

It simply was not fair how staggeringly devoted he was to the crashing moment, arching as he bent his head back, his throat exposed, his cry muffled by a whitegloved hand against his lips. He wanted to be loud, and Alucard knew it, and licked his skin, moaning in recompense.

"MORE," Anderson begged, clawing. "More. More. I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

"Forever." He licked his lips and bent his head, keeping his fangs from Anderson's flesh. He wanted his enemy to be strong, after all. It would not do to be sucking him dry after all the abuse he'd put himself through.


	3. Chapter 3

His heart leaps around inside his chest like an overexcited puppet, jerked around by inconsquential hands. Until you come along and cut the strings.

Never did quite find the sound of hearts intoxicating. Never enjoyed the feel of death in your palm, never derived any twisted pleasure from it, did you? It gives you nothing at all except a feeling of... reflection. How did you ever come to enjoy the brief rush of the kill, the hot ambrosial rewards glistening like gems on your fingertips before the sparkles release, melancholy, into the darkness? How did the pathetic human bundle of nerves, organs, bones - complicated machinery, that's all - ever survive past infancy, past childhood when every reckless choice had the most dire of consequences? You'll never know, because the asking seems so trivial.

But you keep watching his eyes, and you remember for awhile - just for a millisecond - the cheap thrill the kill gave to a younger version of you. It's only his eyes you watch, while your fingertips soil themselves in his flesh, creeping around his body like eyeless parasites. He's watching you but not watching you at the same time, but you can almost still bear witness to what he was thinking before his body failed to endure your playtime. His faith. Filled with cracks, holes with which to peer inside and see the weak-willed man within.

Breakdown.

Dark hallowed confession room. It was a proper place to have this secret little meeting. You think it's ironic since the priest uttered nothing of his sins before his death. The tongue was lying in a coagulated puddle of gore on the floor.

Boredom sets in. And the body is nothing more now than pieces of flesh slowly succumbing to degradation and decay and dirt.

That describes the universe in full. _Decay._

_Freedom is yours now. Those you would have called master, dead._

The woman Integra had fascinated you for awhile. But she was just another, like her father and grandfather, to command you to their beck and call. She had asked nothing more than what was necessary. You were beaten when you were bad. You were relieved from your duties only insofar as you never left the house, never went very far, when you were a good boy who listened to your master. Never killed anyone but what your restrictions dictated as undead. You were called Alucard then. But deep down inside festered the inexorable, inconsolable No-Life King.

It was exciting to be enslaved for awhile. Gave you an opportunity to get to know the ridiculous habits, so much so that you could almost read their minds. Integra was in love with you. Her emotions became more powerful than her reason at one point.

Try not to remember the details. Try not to remember her screams, the flames as they consumed her, the massive mansion she lived in, the cigars she enjoyed. Try not to remember as you stood in the wreckage that everything you found at least interesting, precious to you... was gone.

Try not to remember the butler leaning on a piece of wood, hobbling toward you, monocle imbued with rage and betrayal.

"Are you happy now?"

"No." The truth hurts. And burns.

His body was old and decrepit. But still honed as a masterpiece of war, using his monofilament wires to dice a body as easily as steak, bone and flesh alike. And yet you notice he doesn't attack, that his only weapon is his anguish. That he stood there, spearing you with that look until you glanced away

Try not to remember that, as you realize that you care about how he feels, that his pain is more real to you than your own, you snapped him in half and left his body to roast on the dying embers.

Don't remember it.

You'll fall apart if you do.

Even as you try to smother memories, you start to laugh as you leave the church. The street isn't as empty as it was when you entered. There are vehicles and news vans crowding for space in front of the holy sanctuary. Your shadow is made huge by the floodlights mounted on military vehicles. If you wanted to look back, you would see the shadow of a monster instead of a man... and that is how you feel, like a man, free from servitude but ill-equipped to use it intelligently.

Then you stare at the people gathered around. They're not smiling. In fact, most of the individuals pouring toward you and halting to level weapons in your direction are not smiling at all but look afraid, or excited, or just plain empty. All are tools to the Queen of England. But not you. No longer. As you wonder why some of them may be weeping with fear, you realize: Perhaps they don't appreciate modern art as much as you do.

"All my children... welcome. Welcome to Hell. Now... let us begin the feast of saints."

Your shadow leaps first. Explodes into a multitude of black winged figures the size of men themselves, and swoop down on the armed soldiers, the men armed with cameras. Blood paves the streets a glowing vermillion, illuminated by every the garish floodlights that dare put you in their sight. Death pervades every other smell. You walk among the carnage even as it unfolds around you - blood, bodies, screaming all an anthem to your false reign. You smile, but inside, as each soul reaped enters you, fills you, despair evolves from fear. Eats away at the walls, making the hole bigger. Nothing like these filth will ever fill you, ever taste as sweet. Nothing will.

You realize it's been over long before this... long before Integra Hellsing entered your arms and felt her own demise with your every touch.

Did she die of a broken heart, or because you had painted her pretty with its blood?

The entire street is just an abysmal memory of what had occured, minutes later, as you step up to a tall building nearby and begin to scale it, running from the corpses that are growing cold behind you. There's nothing left for you there. Or anywhere. Even the company of others like yourself has become a bane. Disgusted, you perch on the building you've chosen. Cross-legged, you look at what eternity has for you; the city streets webbed together, glistening with the dew of mankind, the multitude of skyscrapers raping the stars, and the horizon that eternally taunts you with the rising sun or the moon colliding with the earth.

"Ah get th' feelin' yer not exactly hidin' up here, are ya, monster?"

A spark of interest, nothing more. "Why, Judas Priest. Did you follow me here?"

"Ah saw you come up here, after what ya did to those poor gentlemen down there!" Outrage mixed with fear in his voice; it makes you twinge. Anderson was never afraid of you; why now? The priest's footsteps are muffled by the long holy robes he wore to battle. He smells of sweat, holy water... and, damn the Devil, cologne. You quiver faintly, hands folded beneath your chin as you stare at the city of London with nothing but your own aching emptiness for company.

"So have ye finally thrown the yoke of Hellsing?" A touch of anxiety. "I heard the place burned. All of them died. And your little Draculina is nowhere to be found."

"I sent her away. She no longer requires further guidance. And I grew tired..." Eyes slip shut. "...just as I grow tired of you all."

Anderson says nothing. Your priest is silent, for once. He knows he'll have to do everything in his power to stop you. And he does it because of his faith... that goddamn faith that never fears the darkness inside you for what you truly are. He'll keep finding you, keep pursuing you for everything he's worth - for God. Or maybe for you. It brings him closer to God, doing His will, but the closer he gets to you, the larger his sin gets... Because he knows he's the only one you will allow come into contact with that emptiness. Tainting him with darkness, while he claims it.

Pierces it...

Fills it.

You.

"So do you wish to do the usual? Tear at each other's throats like ravenous dogs while feigning the noblest of intentions?" A smile somehow manages to crawl onto your face like a spider, lips wide, teeth shining.

He returns the smile in full, with his straight, perfect teeth, hinting of canines. And that, too, fills you and makes you reel with imagined guilt. Spread your arms out wide, pout petulantly and sigh, "Well, you caught me, officer. Oh, what will you do with me now?"

A steady glimmer from his left hand catches your eye. And then an ounce of hesitation - and you bark an order, "Impale me. Kill me. I don't care how, just do it. I tire of everyone's dawdling, pretending you have all the time in God's damned eternity. Kill me, you Judas bastard!"

The Iscariot priest gave a twitch of the corner of his mouth, all serious now, and stepped forward, the glimmer in his hand now redefining itself as a small metal box, polished to a mirror shine, the impersonal image of the cross emblazoned on its face. Impatient, not caring what new weak images of faith, attacking seems the best course of action. In half of one of Anderson's drumlike heartbeats, you have him, and his hands are clawing at your hair, pulling your face back from his throat... which you can smell has cologne, and deeper beneath the skin, a thrumming heat that warms your black heart to the core. Blood is the scent of betrayal... of the body and the mind.

"This can help you," he growls, pressing the hard cold metal box against my chest. It burns when it touches fabric, right through to sensitive skin. But his warm breath thrills you even more.

Lips brush against lips. We exchanged a breath, with words: "So can this." The metal box slips into your palm though, and your fingers clasp it instinctively. It is cold, hard, and exactly how you feel at this moment.

He pushes back with a firm shove; you let him. It hurts to be denied, but you don't have a reason to rush, no reason to take. Not yet. At least not this time.

"What the hell is this supposed to do?" Impatiently. The look in Anderson's glasses revealed nothing, but beyond that, his eyes burned with a peculiar fire... not the usual fire of the righteous or the theologically impaired. His lips purse and he motions vaguely to open it, unable to voice what was apparently rendering him mute.

The box opens easily. You could have crushed it with your one hand. Inside is a small vial, secured in place by small metal hooks which give way with a springing bouncing-back. It is filled with something the color of black blood... and it burns to hold it. It feels warm and delightful, and it seems to beat inside your grasp like a tiny heart. Like small moth's wings. Your eyes close and your tongue tip glides along your fangs as the thirst rises reluctantly, like a long-forgotten urge just remembered after a long inactivity. Sleepily your hunger rises, like a slumbering cat from a nap in the sun, to investigate the delicious scent luring it from stalking dreams.

"What is it?"

"Whatever ye want it to be. Ah'm givin' it to you... although, thinking back, maybe you aren't ready for it yet."

"I'm getting tired of riddles." The small glass object holding the dark liquid inside pulses. _The blood is the life the blood is the soul._

The vial breaks on your teeth, the seal unleashing the unbridled scent of blood. As the miniscule amount trickles over your canines and gums, your tongue slides over the front of your teeth to lap at the dribble escaping to the corner of your mouth. It tastes smoky, like a smoldering fire... and in the small electrical explosion when it hits your tongue, you See. Alexander in a white hospital gown, his body a spidery mass of wires, wires, and needles sticking into every inch of him where skin showed. The red line drawn in the garish glow of medical lights leading to a machine that pumps and pumps until Anderson was as pale as the white crisp linens he lay on. The mechanical vampire droning in a horrible, rhythmic noise, like gnashing metal teeth.

"This is your blood?"

"Treated with anything that can possibly destroy a monster like you."

You realize, _Ah. This burns like fire and fills me with..._ But the smoky warmth of_ him_ counterbalances the pain. The empty box and the vial fall to the rooftop, skittering along stone tiles, hitting the ground below with barely a sound. You step toward him, enduring the message in the blood awhile longer. "And this flows in you now?"

"Aye." Anderson lifted his arms and let the sleeves fall away to show the pock-marked flesh where the needles had punctured his body. Indeed, the smell of him had changed. His skin looked far too sallow and unnatural to be filled with purely human blood. He was poisonous. It must have been filling him to endless agony to endure the unnatural fluids scraping his veins and arteries raw, as if hydrochloric acid was flowing within him instead of the delicious blood (_which is life and not death_). He was a walking poison cocktail to any vampire who sank their fangs to his skin. "And Ah'm willing to give it a try if you are."

Hunger roars in you... unwitting slave to the blatant offering Anderson made, his neck exposed now as his Iscariot uniform loosened. His smile is wide and charming, his straight teeth shining in the soft moonlight. You want to slap him, tell him to fight like a human... but in a moment of delusion you think he's doing all this because he loves you.

You think to yourself, I know better than that, but in a deep crying place inside you dare to hope.

But only an enemy would know what you want, just so he could take it away from you. And what do you want? _More than anything in the world?_

As he moves toward you again, your defenses are lowered... but you don't appear to remember how to be a warrior. You're thinking, _He might be tricking me. He might now be working for someone to capture me, sell me to the world circus... or the science department of some backwater country to be studied... and put through even more endless torment than even dear Dr. Van Helsing could concoct in that bulldog head of his_.

But then arms are locked around your chest, and his lips are close to your ear, breathing, breathing. His neck is beneath your chin. His heart painstakingly hauls each unit of venomed blood through its chambers and pulses agonizingly in his throat. He's in pain. From his every breath you recognize the agony of a man slowly tortured from within. You find amusement in how literally that statement is. But that's the last coherent sentence to be had before your mouth slides to his throat, and his small breaths quicken and throbs. The priest presses against your leg, his arms tightening, his teeth clenching.

"Take me," he growled haltingly. "Your last chance, monster."

You want to ask him something else. But for once, there is no room between your two tightly embraced bodies, not enough room even for this man to breathe anymore. His ribs are cracking slowly. His heart labors beneath your lips and all you want to do is push him and pull him at the same time.

Suddenly the world is bright again. A low, repetitive 'whuffing' fills the air and you pull back, eyes withering to little pinpricks of crimson.

Anderson looks back at you, the same shocked surprise and anguish and annoyance filling his expression. "Bloody—" The helicopter fixes its brilliant light on the rooftop where you both now stand. Anderson snarls in exasperation, blood filling his lungs before soaking back into his tissues where it belongs; the venom makes his voice raspy. "It's not wha' ye think!"

You say, "I don't believe you" in the calmest of voices. But to kill him for his betrayal was hopeless. The bastard would never die. He is the impossible quandary that challenges everything you do and are. He is nothing like the universe you know, the one about decay and endings that are really a beginning to something even worse. You know you'll seek him out for his offer again. You'll chase him, instead of the other way around, just like you do when you dream.

He shouts for you as soon as you disappear. You run.

You'll find him. He'll find you. Day and night. Your endless chase.


End file.
